Greece

18 October 2003
Police join strikes
TENS OF thousands of public sector workers are in the middle of a major strike wave over pay in Greece. Prime minister Costas Simitis said there is no money for pay rises, in part because of the spiralling cost of next year's Athens Olympics.

28 June 2003
UP TO 70,000 people took part in the protests outside the European Union summit near Salonika, Greece, last weekend. "It was a tremendous sight as people came together down the seafront in the centre of the city," says Panos Garganas, editor of Socialist Worker's sister paper in Greece, Workers Solidarity.

11 January 2003
A POLITICAL explosion reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall is shaking Cyprus. It has the potential to overcome the tragic division of the island's people along ethnic lines-Turks in a state in the north, Greeks in the south. It could also challenge Greece and Turkey, which, along with former colonial power Britain, have fostered those divisions.

05 October 2002
IT WAS not just in London that people took to the streets to protest against war last weekend. Other demonstrations around the world included 5,000 marching in Washington in the US, 50,000 in Madrid in Spain and 3,000 in Athens in Greece. In Rome in Italy 100,000 took part in a demonstration which had a major anti-war theme.

15 December 2001
Charles Clarke, chairman (unelected) of the Labour Party, last week declared his love for the US under George W Bush. In his youth, he admitted, "I was a strong opponent of the foreign policy of the US," and campaigned over issues such as US support for fascist states in Greece, Spain and Portugal, US support for dictatorships in Latin America, and the use of US troops in Cambodia and Vietnam.

10 February 2001
BSE-"mad cow disease"- has suddenly become a key issue right across Europe. In France, Italy, Greece, Spain and, above all, Germany, beef consumption has slumped by up to 40 percent in the wake of a sudden rise in BSE cases.

27 November 1999
POLICE DRENCHED the centre of the Greek capital, Athens, with teargas to disperse mass demonstrations against US president Bill Clinton on Friday of last week. Over 30,000 people battled to get near government buildings and the US embassy. They chanted anti-NATO slogans and denounced Clinton as the "Butcher of the Balkans" for ordering the bombing of Yugoslavia earlier this year.

20 November 1999
The threat of mass demonstrations forced US president Bill Clinton to postpone his planned visit to Greece last week. That Clinton did not dare spend two days in Athens is an inspiration to everyone who opposes the US military bullying its way around the world. In a humiliating address to people in Greece, Clinton conceded that the threat of protests had kept him away.